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acquisitions
Marissa Mayer, Google's "high priestess of simplicity," tells Yelp about her $300 highlights
The email-newsletter headline had my business-minded editor all hot and bothered: "Yelp Goes to Google!" But no, this wasn't an oh-so-logical tuck-in acquisition of the local reviews site by the search giant. Instead, it was a sitdown with Marissa Mayer. In the interview, Mayer reveals her usual spreadsheet array of girly affectations: cupcakes! Manolos! highlights! I'm miffed about the highlights, because we have the same stylist, and as Mayer gushes like the best ladymag ingenue, "I hesitate to even say anything because she's so good and I'd hate for it to be harder for me to get an appointment." Still, cute to see her getting cozy with the review website, since if Google did take the plunge and acquire Yelp, it'd be Mayer, VP of Stuff People Actually Use, who'd make the call.
sex trade
No priority shipping for escorts, not yet, anyway
If TheEroticReview.com is "Amazon.com for prostitutes" (as dubbed by Matt Richtel in the New York Times), do customers get "free delivery for orders over $100", asks Salon.com's Broadsheet. We agree with Salon's assessment — TER is really more like Yelp — unless there's some exciting new feature to Amazon Prime that the Times was briefed on under embargo.
yelp
New details on Yelp's New York expansion
Social reviews site Yelp isn't nearly as popular in New York as it is in San Francisco and management has been planning to do something about it. "They're gonna pump up efforts to conquer NYC, renting an office in Gramercy area and assign [an] East Coast community leader," a source with new details tells us. Yelp already has an ad sales office in New York's West Village, but our source says those people will move to the larger office further uptown by September as well. Yelp is a cousin to widgetmaker Slide, with Slide founder Max Levchin on Yelp's board. With Slide's own upcoming move to New York and Yelp's city expansion, we'd expect to see a lot more Levchin around the Alley, except, well, we hear he never leaves the office. (And if he did, we'd prefer he say hello to his bride to be first.)
san francisco
Gavin Newsom complains about his Yelp rating
Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman and Nish Nadaraja, marketing director of the local listing site, sat down with San Francisco's preternaturally hunky god-mayor Gavin Newsom. Newsom agreed to the meeting in order to convince Yelpers he's "more hip than the 3.5 stars makes me appear." Before they lobbed him softball questions in earnest, he got to pitch his environmentalist credentials, taking credit for a greener taxi fleet — though his executive order commanding municipal agencies to convert to greener vehicles has stalled, and it was the Board of Supervisors who passed the taxi legislation. All most voters seem to care about is The Hair:The days where I had a little dollop of gel are gone. I'm using quarter of a bottle at a time and I'm not proud of it. And I know that I need help!(Photo by AP/Eric Risberg)
real estate
RedEnvelope failure frees up SoMa space
The likely closure of troubled online retailer RedEnvelope has a benefit for space-hungry startups near its SoMa headquarters at 149 New Montgomery. Yelp and Slide are among the rapidly expanding companies in the neighborhood. I asked Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman if he was going to swoop in on the space. "I wish 'cause it looks like a cool building, but we recently added space at 706 Mission so I think we're locked in there for a while," he told me. No word from Slide CEO Max Levchin. RedEnvelope signed a five-year lease in July 2004, with a base rent of $51,332 a month for 28,000 square feet. (Photo by Google Street View)
chinh nguyen
"Piggy" lover gives Valleywag a three-star Yelp review
It turns out that Chinh Nguyen, the foul-mouthed, AmEx-flashing, self-described "balla" girlfriend of Nvidia vice president Neil Trevett, isn't just an indiscreet blogger; she's also an elite Yelptard. Yelp users like to celebrate their hundredth-review milestones, and for Nguyen's 300th, she chose to write up Valleywag. We are honored beyond words; before this, we were utterly Yelpless. Chinh, we at Valleywag really like your style. If the job interview you mentioned in our phone call doesn't work out, would you consider blogging? We have an opening for a reporter, and I think you'd fit right in here. Nguyen's Yelp review of Valleywag, "a National Enquirer for geeks": More »
conflicts of interest
"San Francisco" trashes Yelp -- and its own ethics
A recent piece on Yelp written for San Francisco magazine by one Karen Solomon roughs up the local-reviews website, but Solomon's critiques are mostly on target: The site's audience is insular and dominated by Bay Area residents; it has struggled to expand to other cities and define a business model. Just one small problem: San Francisco magazine reviews local businesses. In between throwing lavish parties, Yelp runs a website which lets its users do the same. So the two compete, at least in theory. More »
party report
Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (Even the founders get in on the action!) Last night, Yelp held its holiday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Upon entering, I was greeted by a mass of San Francisco Yelptards, each louder than the next, all laughing, cajoling, flirting, and hugging each other. Self-congratulations were clearly in order.
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Party correspondent confronts ghosts of Yelp parties past
Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (Even the founders get in on the action!) Last night, Yelp held its holiday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Upon entering, I was greeted by a mass of San Francisco Yelptards, each louder than the next, all laughing, cajoling, flirting, and hugging each other. Self-congratulations were clearly in order.
More »
5:00 PM on Thu Dec 6 2007
By Megan McCarthy
2,400 views,
7 comments
Latest by Fake Dave McClure: Valleywag, the local gossip rag, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. more »
Who knew Yelp, the San Francisco-based local reviews site, had such pull in City Hall? Hunky god-mayor Gavin Newsom has proclaimed December 5, 2007, as "Yelp Day." [Yelp Blog]
Holiday Yelpings
Yelp out tonight, as the party-hearty local ratings service puts on its holiday shindig at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Remember how much fun last year's party was? That and more in tonight's Valleywag Calendar.
Yelp out tonight, as the party-hearty local ratings service puts on its holiday shindig at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Remember how much fun last year's party was? That and more in tonight's Valleywag Calendar.
paypal mafia
Here's the real takeaway from Fortune's long-expected profile of the PayPal mafia: "Peter Thiel has a butler." The former PayPal CEO is living large in Pacific Heights. But he's hardly idle. With PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, masterminding a wide array of startups founded by some of his star hires at the payments company he sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. He's now on the board of Facebook, with a stake worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and stakes in Yelp, LinkedIn, Slide, and others besides. He may not quite be the capo di tutti capi imagined by Fortune's photo editors — who cleverly staged a Godfather-inspired shoot, above — but he's created a gang that can run free from the rules of the traditional VC game. Sand Hill Road hates him for it. I say, more power to him — and the rest of his mafiosi. (Photo of Thiel and Levchin by Robyn Twomey/Fortune; Godfather still from IMDB)
Is Peter Thiel Silicon Valley's godfather?
Here's the real takeaway from Fortune's long-expected profile of the PayPal mafia: "Peter Thiel has a butler." The former PayPal CEO is living large in Pacific Heights. But he's hardly idle. With PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, masterminding a wide array of startups founded by some of his star hires at the payments company he sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. He's now on the board of Facebook, with a stake worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and stakes in Yelp, LinkedIn, Slide, and others besides. He may not quite be the capo di tutti capi imagined by Fortune's photo editors — who cleverly staged a Godfather-inspired shoot, above — but he's created a gang that can run free from the rules of the traditional VC game. Sand Hill Road hates him for it. I say, more power to him — and the rest of his mafiosi. (Photo of Thiel and Levchin by Robyn Twomey/Fortune; Godfather still from IMDB)
followup
More PayPal Mafia mugshots
Thanks to commenter yarbles, we were alerted to evidence of two more members of the PayPal Mafia posing, like YouTube founder Jawed Karim, in mafioso costumes. Pictured, above, Yelp cofounders Russell Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman. (Stoppelman's the one with the fake mustache. At least, we hope it's fake.) Any more evidence out there? Join the gang.
One addendum to tonight's activities: Yelp's pretty-boy founders, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russ Simmons, will take an unusually serious turn and speak at the Commonwealth Club tonight at 6 p.m. [Yelp]
confonz
ConFonz hits the Web 2.0 party circuit
CONFONZ AT THE WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — While the rest of the world prepares for Halloween, there was a significantly scarier sight on display yesterday at the Palace Hotel. You truly know the web 2.0 "revolution" is over when the suits outnumber the geeks. Granted, the Palace isn't exactly a geek haven. And the pricing of badges for the conference is certainly out of the range of most of your average Web coders. But it's easily within the grasp of venture capitalists, marketing weenies, and CEOs. And that's just who attended this, the second Web 2.0 conference of the year. More »
party report
A tip for those of you trying to mingle with successful entrepreneurs and VCs: Attend more than just the standard tech meet-and-greets. The people who are really in a position to help you with your startup never go to them anyway. So where to go instead? Check out events like last night's Lotus Vodka release party at SoMa's Euro-inspired restaurant Supperclub. You'll find founders and the moneymen behind them willing to chat and unable to prejudge you based on your nametag. Refreshing. Bonus: The nontech people who attend these things make for a far better-looking crowd. Far better-looking. The full report, and a gallery of photos, follows.
More »
Lotus Vodka offers release from the tech scene
A tip for those of you trying to mingle with successful entrepreneurs and VCs: Attend more than just the standard tech meet-and-greets. The people who are really in a position to help you with your startup never go to them anyway. So where to go instead? Check out events like last night's Lotus Vodka release party at SoMa's Euro-inspired restaurant Supperclub. You'll find founders and the moneymen behind them willing to chat and unable to prejudge you based on your nametag. Refreshing. Bonus: The nontech people who attend these things make for a far better-looking crowd. Far better-looking. The full report, and a gallery of photos, follows.
More »
search
MerchantCircle provides a circle jerk for local businesses
The first rule of Valleywag: Never pitch Valleywag. But sometimes the temptation just proves too great. In response to a post about Google and Yelp's rivalry in local search, a MerchantCircle employee contacted us to tout the company's supposed leadership in the market, pitching the site for some Valleywag love. Well, here's some tough love. We've looked into MerchantCircle's business model .. and found nothing but self-love. More »
10:17 AM on Mon Aug 20 2007
By Tim Faulkner
3,095 views,
7 comments
Latest by SnowingCookies: @SajiliBabbas: exactly the same reason why I am here. the automated cold-calling from them is still happening, received one just more »
crime
